Growing Eco Direct Action & the Need for Movement Media

In this episode of the It’s Going Down podcast, we caught up with two members of the Earth First! Journal collective, to discuss the state of the radical environmental movement, the journal itself, current campaigns which are inspiring them, the need for revolutionary media infrastructure, an update on a lawsuit against them we discussed on a previous podcast, and also their recent plans to move the Earth First! office to the Pacific Northwest.

To start off, we discuss the growing radical and direct action based environmental movement, which presently seems to be growing, both in terms of broad public support, but also in terms of size and terrain. We discuss inspiring campaigns against logging in the Mattole in Northern California, anti-pipeline fights against the Bayou Bridge pipeline in Louisiana, and the growing tree-sits and blockades in the Hellbender Autonomous Zone. We discuss how these tactics have grown or changed, not only since Standing Rock, but also over the last several decades.

We then switch gears and discuss the state of the Earth First! Journal, which is a long running radical environmental and green anarchist publication that covers a variety of Native, ecological, and direct action based movements and campaigns. We talk about why it is important to have a publication in an age of the internet, what it is like to run a magazine with a rotating case of editors, and how revolutionary media can grow in the present terrain of Facebook and crowd funding.

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We end by discussing what is next for the EF!J, as well as get an update on the lawsuit against the Earth First! movement we heard about last time people from the EF!J were on the show. This episode is a great and moving discussion not only on the state of ecological struggles on the ground, but also in terms of grassroots media which is fighting to give it a voice.